Tales of the White Stag

Here is an incomplete list of classic recordings which have each, in part, provided inspiration for this album:

• Berlin, Lou Reed
• Selling England By the Pound, Genesis
• Close To the Edge, Yes
• Siamese Dream, Smashing Pumpkins
• Turn! Turn! Turn!, The Byrds
• Der Rhinegold, Richard Wagner
• Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles
• Abbey Road, The Beatles
• Glassworks, Philip Glass
• The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse, The Besnard Lakes
• The Trials of Van Occupanther, Midlake
• OK Computer, Radiohead
• Photos of Ghosts, Premiata Forneria Marconi
• 3:47 EST, Klaatu
• Hope, Klaatu

Here is an incomplete list of literature which have each, in part, provided inspiration for this album:

• Le Morte D’Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory
• The Man Who Would Be King, Rudyard Kipling
• Hamlet, William Shakespeare
• The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, Robert E. Howard
• Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
• The Saga of the Volsungs (author unknown)

Now that I’ve introduced the symbols of my protagonist, it’s time to introduce the symbols of my antagonist: the Ryan coat-of-arms.

Gules, three gryphons' heads erased argent. A gryphon segreant gules holding in the sinister claw a dagger proper. Malo mori quam foedari.

I should stress that I mean no disrespect to my father’s family, my ancestors, by doing this. I am very proud of the people who have come before me. There is only one single and solitary reason why these symbols have any influence whatever on the story I’m composing, and that is that the meaning of the symbols themselves inspire me to invent a certain character.

Firstly, the color red has always been associated with danger, aggression, and war. Some would say that those are good qualities, but I kinda think that’s a bunch of macho malarkey. Second, the gryphon is another symbol of valor and bravery in war. The one shown in the crest is even shown holding a dagger. The motto translates to “Death before dishonor.” These are symbols that can easily be interpreted as being violent and war-like.

The more I thought about the symbolism of these two coats-of-arms, the more apparent it was that they were opposed to each other. So it was only natural that any characters these images inspired would also be opposed to each other, at least in a philosophical sense if not a mortal sense.

It remains to be seen exactly how the story will play out, but I have the basics in mind already.

As I implied earlier, the first time I encountered the image of the white stag was as a boy when I first saw an old, water damaged print of my great-grandmother’s assumed coat-of-arms. The second time, things got really interesting.

A few years ago, I began reading Le Morte D’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. Every so often, there would be a story that began with a white stag or “hart” wandering into the king’s hall. A knight who followed the deer would invariably be led to some sort of fantastic adventure. After a little research, I found that the white stag was a common character in Indo-European mythology, especially Celtic mythology. It was believed that the appearance of a white stag signified that the spirit world was nearby, or that a taboo had been committed, which certainly takes the mystery out of Malory’s stories. His contemporaries would have understood the message perfectly.

All of these tall tales had given me the impression that white deer were as imaginary as the end of the rainbow–until I saw a photograph of one. Turns out these things are all over the place, even here in Wisconsin. And they’re not albinos, but simply normal deer with a genetic mutation, like white tigers.

Ironically, all of this research takes the wind out of the sails of the mythology of white deer, but I plan on taking a cue from Malory and using this creature as the genesis of my album’s story arc. This is only the first page from classical literature that I will draw from.

Not the first image to inspire me on this project, but certainly one of the most important, is the coat-of-arms of my paternal great-grandmother’s family, the O’Connors of County Clare…or central Michigan, really. Loretta O’Connor had no brothers, and when she married my great-grandfather, John Ryan, an unwritten pact was formed between the two families that the first-born sons from that lineage and onward would have the middle name of O’Connor. Thus it is my middle name, my father’s, and my grandfather’s.

Ignoring, for the moment, the very real probability that no one I am directly descended from was of “noble blood,” and that my only claim to any coat-of-arms is likely through the typical American fascination with inventing roots where none may exist, what’s important here is the imagery. If it wasn’t for my name and lineage (however plebeian it may be), the collection of symbols in this image wouldn’t be made known to me. Anyway, I’m rambling. Here’s the coat-of-arms, followed by its blazon and motto (near as I can tell):

Vert, a stag trippant argent. A hand in a gauntlet erect, maintaining a broken dart all proper. Nec timeo, nec sperno.

So now it should be obvious where the whole White Stag thing came from. Some people believe that, in heraldry, the color white signifies peace, and a deer means “I will not fight without provocation.” I’ll be writing more later about how the white stag ties into classical literature and Indo-European mythology.

The motto translates to “Neither fear nor spurn,” but curioser is the broken arrow in the crest. I haven’t been able to find any information about what that symbol could possibly mean, but I can take that as an excuse to interpret it in my own way. It seems to me like a symbol of pacifism, which would hold well with the symbolism of the white stag.

These will be the symbols of my protagonist. In a way, this is the point at which I have followed the white stag into my own adventure.

My new Devi Ever Rocket fuzz pedal arrived from Portland, OR, today.

My god, it’s full of stars!

And if you put it up to your ear, you can hear the sound of speakers tearing.

Today is the greatest.

He enters the courtyard, a tall, gleaming beast as if chiseled from snowy marble. A moment before, you were leading your lord’s horse from the stable, but his presence immediately freezes you in your footsteps. He locks eyes with you, and you sense a strange intelligence behind his gaze, where science and reason would have you believe is nothing more than the quivering brain of a dumb animal. As you stare into his eyes, the bustling activity around you seems to fade into the distance and grow utterly silent. You take a step forward. Then another, and another, until you become aware that you are making a deliberate path toward him with your master’s horse in tow. He lowers his head slightly, and you swear you can almost make out a smile on his face. Then he turns and trots back out through the gate. He stops, looks back at you once again, and you take a moment to climb astride the horse. When you look up again, the otherworldly beast has darted into the field beyond the city walls. You spur the horse forward, pursuing the creature across the field and toward the densely wooded forest. As the treeline draws closer, you notice a strange, misty glow beginning to emanate from inside the green labyrinth. While the beast disappears into the trees, strange music wafts into your ears from afar, and now you know: You were right to follow that kingly animal.

The stories were true. The White Stag is real.

Hello, and welcome. This is the creative journal of my new progressive rock recording project, to be released under the name White Stag. You will be able to track my progress here, as well as follow my inner thoughts down the rabbit hole of the album’s thematic development.

Right now, I only have a vague idea of what the album will be about, so this will be somewhat of an exploratory process for both participants and observers. I’ve found that I write a lot faster when I have imagery in place already, so one of the first things I’ll be doing is designing packaging for the album before I even start writing any lyrics. This may seem like putting the horse before the cart, but it’s more logical for me, in a weird way.

This will be an indie release, so the plan is to release the album to multiple distributors on the Internet, including iTunes and Amazon. I’ll be taking a cue from Trent Reznor by distributing the album and its “packaging” electronically from my own site.

That’s all for now. Keep checking back.